Saturday, June 30, 2012

Obama has now been condemned as a war criminal by the UN and by former President Jimmy Carter (backed by other former Democratic Party leaders), among others. The following article is in the current issue of EIR. For the op-ed by Jimmy Carter published in the NY Times, see:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html?_r=1 Mike Billington

Hits ‘Kill, Not Capture’ Policy ---

Obama Killer Drones Scored by UN Officialby Carl OsgoodJune 25—Anyone who still doubts the Nazi-like characterof the Obama Administration needs to examine,closely, how the U.S. killer-drone program operates inPakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places. The Administration,using the CIA and the military’s Joint SpecialOperations Command, carries out targeted killingsin countries with which it is not officially at war, usingReaper and predator drone aircraft, without any sort ofaccountability or oversight or even any explanation ofthe legal basis for this campaign. Among its victims have been at least three Americancitizens, killed in Yemen, whom the Administrationclaimed were terrorist facilitators, without ever providingevidence of its claims, never mind any due processfor the victims. The White House has refused to officiallyacknowledge the program, despite Congressionalinquiries and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.However, leaks known to have come from the WhiteHouse bragged about how the perverse President takespersonal responsibility for choosing targets and directingstrikes. Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in describingwhat the drone program is on June 23. “You know,when the people in the United States know they have aHitler running the U.S. government, which is what theyhave—this drone business and similar processes, donepersonally by the dictator, der Führer—that is a bigissue! That any one of you, anyone out there, can suddenlydisappear—then it reminds me of a case in Germany,where the town, which was a quiet town, andthere’s a big smokestack in a wooded area around thattown, and occasionally great billows of smoke werecoming out of that smokestack. And life went on otherwise.And millions of people were killed, in the courseof that, and the warfare, just because people didn’tnotice what the smokestacks had meant, back then.“And that’s the same thing that’s going on in theUnited States, under der Führer, now! And people whoare less old than I am—there’s only a million or fewerother people still around doing things—but we remember;and other people get the smell, which tells themwhat we remember.” Obama Violates Human RightsThis brutal, targeted killing by the Obama Administration,with little regard for civilian casualties, hasdamaged the United States in more ways than one. Notonly has the policy backfired in places like Pakistan andYemen, where the killings have turned the local populationsagainst the U.S., and increased sympathy for theenemies we’re supposed to be fighting, but it has alsodamaged our credibility in international fora. How canthe U.S. claim to be concerned about human rights violationswhen it ignores human rights principles in itsoperations in other countries? By former President Jimmy Carter’s count, as publishedin an op-ed in the June 24 New York Times, theObama Administration’s counter-terrorism policy violatesat least 10 of the 30 articles of the 1948 UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, including the one against“cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The killer-drone campaign has been the target of investigationby the UN Human Rights Council for someyears, and the subject of a report, released last week byChristof Heyns, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for ExtrajudicialKillings, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.Heyns’ report noted that his predecessor had raisedconcerns about the program in 2008, but that the U.S.has done nothing to bring about improved transparencyand accountability of the program since that time.Heyns said that the program not only threatens 60years of international law, but that some attacks mayeven constitute war crimes. “Are we to accept majorchanges to the international legal system which hasbeen in existence since World War II and survived nuclearthreats?” he asked. Some states, he said, “find targetedkillings immensely attractive. Others may do soin the future. Current targeting practices weaken therule of law. Killings may be lawful in an armed conflict[such as in Afghanistan], but many targeted killingstake place far from areas recognized as being an armedconflict.” He added that there have been reports of secondarydrone strikes on rescuers helping the injuredfrom the first drone strike, and if these reports are true,“those further attacks are a war crime.” Heyns has put the questions of accountability andtransparency to the Obama Administration’s representatives,but is not satisfied with the response. “I don’tthink we have a full answer to the legal framework andwe certainly don’t have the answer to the accountabilityissues,” he told reporters on June 20. “How are thesedecisions taken?” he asked. “Also the effect on citizens,civilians, how are these decisions taken in the first placeand the numbers that are involved and also the effect interms of accountability when civilians are also killed?The standards, also if one looks at the recent newspaperreports that came out, how are the direct participants inhostilities, how are they identified, the legitimate targetsas opposed to the civilians? Is it simply everybodywho’s around someone who’s considered to be a legitimatetarget—those things are very worrying and certainlythose are things that I will follow up on.” The U.S. response to Heyns’ report was to say thatmost of the issues of concern are outside the purview ofthe Human Rights Council, and besides, the rationaleand legal basis for the program has already been articulated,in public speeches by Deputy National SecurityAdvisor John O. Brennan at Harvard Law School onSept. 16, 2011, and at the Woodrow Wilson InternationalCenter for Scholars on April 30, 2012 (Brennan simply claimedthat the use of drones passed every legal and "ethical" hurdleand called their use "wise" because no US lives are endangered);by Attorney General Eric Holder at Northwestern UniversitySchool of Law on March 5, 2012 (Holder said that the "dueprocess" required by the US Constitution did not mean "judicial"process - it is adequate that the President approves); and byDepartment of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson at Yale LawSchool on February 22, 2012 (Johnson said that the entire worldis now our battlefield, and therefore any use of deadly force,anywhere, is legal). Heyns ridiculed the U.S. argument that the drone killingsare a legitimate response to 9/11. “It’s difficult to seehow any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as inresponse to events in 2001,” he said. “Some states seemto want to invent new laws to justify new practices.” Obama Sets Killer PrecedentThe Human Rights Council session opened on June19 with Heyns presenting his written report, which followedup from the report of his predecessor in 2008,which had taken notice of the lack of a legal frameworkfor drone killings and the lack of transparency into thepolicy behind them. “The Special Rapporteur reiterateshis predecessor’s recommendation that the [U.S.] Governmentspecify bases for decisions to kill rather thancapture ‘human targets’ and whether the State in whichthe killing takes place has given consent,” Heyns wrote(emphasis added). “It should also specify procedural safeguards inplace to ensure in advance that targeted killings complywith international law, as well as the measures takenafter such killing to ensure that its legal and factualanalysis is accurate.” Heyns concludes that he “is seriouslyconcerned that the practice of targeted killingcould set a dangerous precedent, in that any governmentcould, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives,decide to target and kill an individual on theterritory of any state if it considers that said individualconstitutes a threat.” The figures Heyns reported were astounding.Citing the Pakistan Human Rights Commission,Heyns said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 peoplein Pakistan in 2010 alone. Thousands have been killedin 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20% of whom arebelieved to be civilians. “Although figures vary widely with regard to droneattack estimates, all studies concur on one importantpoint: there has been a dramatic increase in their useover the past three years. While these attacks are directedat individuals believed to be leaders or activemembers of al Qaeda or the Taliban, in the context ofarmed conflict, in other instances, civilians have allegedlyalso perished in the attacks in regions where it isunclear whether there was an armed conflict or not,”Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effortbe made to arrest a suspect, in line with the “principlesof necessity and proportionality on the use of force.”There had been no official or satisfactory response todemands issued by Heyns’ predecessor, Heyns wrote. Heyns’ predecessor, New York University law professorPhilip Alston, was also sharply critical of theU.S. killer drone program. In a September 2011 reportafter he left the UN, Alston wrote that the use of targetedkillings by the Obama Administration “representsa fundamental regression in the evolution of both internationallaw and United States domestic law.” Until9/11, the trend on both international law and U.S. lawhad been away from targeted killings and assassinations,a trend reversed by the George W. Bush Administrationand, even more aggressively, by the Obama Administration.The complete lack of transparency andaccountability of the program, Alston concluded,“means that the United States cannot possibly satisfy itsobligations under international law for its use of lethalforce” thereby undermining international law and settingprecedents “which will inevitably come back tohaunt the United States before long, when invoked byother states with highly problematic agendas. ‘The Public Does Not Have a Right To Know’Not only did the Obama Administration representativesin Geneva refuse to provide satisfactory answersto Heyns’ questions, but back home, the Administrationmade clear that it has no intention of clarifying the legalbasis for the killer-drone program, nor releasing anyother pertinent information to the American public regardingthe program. In response to an ACLU/NewYork Times lawsuit, government lawyers told a Federaljudge in New York on June 21 that: “Whether or not theCIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involvedin targeted lethal operations remains classified.”Furthermore, “Even to describe the numbers and detailsof most of these documents [that the suit seeks] wouldreveal information that could damage the governmentscounter-terrorism efforts.” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer ridiculedthe government’s argument, noting that the drone programis an open secret and that the Administration hasboasted about it to reporters. “The public is entitled toknow more about the legal authority the administrationis claiming and the war the administration is using itfor,” Jaffer said in a statement. The ACLU is calling onObama to reveal more information “about the processby which individuals, including American citizens, areadded to government kill lists.”

Obama has now been condemned as a war criminal by the UN and by former President Jimmy Carter (backed by other former Democratic Party leaders), among others. The following article is in the current issue of EIR. For the op-ed by Jimmy Carter published in the NY Times, see:

June 25—Anyone who still doubts the Nazi-like characterof the Obama Administration needs to examine,closely, how the U.S. killer-drone program operates inPakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places. The Administration,using the CIA and the military’s Joint SpecialOperations Command, carries out targeted killingsin countries with which it is not officially at war, usingReaper and predator drone aircraft, without any sort ofaccountability or oversight or even any explanation ofthe legal basis for this campaign. Among its victims have been at least three Americancitizens, killed in Yemen, whom the Administrationclaimed were terrorist facilitators, without ever providingevidence of its claims, never mind any due processfor the victims. The White House has refused to officiallyacknowledge the program, despite Congressionalinquiries and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.However, leaks known to have come from the WhiteHouse bragged about how the perverse President takespersonal responsibility for choosing targets and directingstrikes. Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in describingwhat the drone program is on June 23. “You know,when the people in the United States know they have aHitler running the U.S. government, which is what theyhave—this drone business and similar processes, donepersonally by the dictator, der Führer—that is a bigissue! That any one of you, anyone out there, can suddenlydisappear—then it reminds me of a case in Germany,where the town, which was a quiet town, andthere’s a big smokestack in a wooded area around that

town, and occasionally great billows of smoke werecoming out of that smokestack. And life went on otherwise.And millions of people were killed, in the courseof that, and the warfare, just because people didn’tnotice what the smokestacks had meant, back then.“And that’s the same thing that’s going on in theUnited States, under der Führer, now! And people whoare less old than I am—there’s only a million or fewerother people still around doing things—but we remember;and other people get the smell, which tells themwhat we remember.”

Obama Violates Human RightsThis brutal, targeted killing by the Obama Administration,with little regard for civilian casualties, hasdamaged the United States in more ways than one. Notonly has the policy backfired in places like Pakistan andYemen, where the killings have turned the local populationsagainst the U.S., and increased sympathy for theenemies we’re supposed to be fighting, but it has alsodamaged our credibility in international fora. How canthe U.S. claim to be concerned about human rights violationswhen it ignores human rights principles in itsoperations in other countries? By former President Jimmy Carter’s count, as publishedin an op-ed in the June 24 New York Times, theObama Administration’s counter-terrorism policy violatesat least 10 of the 30 articles of the 1948 UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, including the one against“cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The killer-drone campaign has been the target of investigationby the UN Human Rights Council for someyears, and the subject of a report, released last week byChristof Heyns, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for ExtrajudicialKillings, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.Heyns’ report noted that his predecessor had raisedconcerns about the program in 2008, but that the U.S.has done nothing to bring about improved transparencyand accountability of the program since that time.Heyns said that the program not only threatens 60years of international law, but that some attacks mayeven constitute war crimes. “Are we to accept majorchanges to the international legal system which hasbeen in existence since World War II and survived nuclearthreats?” he asked. Some states, he said, “find targetedkillings immensely attractive. Others may do soin the future. Current targeting practices weaken therule of law. Killings may be lawful in an armed conflict[such as in Afghanistan], but many targeted killings

take place far from areas recognized as being an armedconflict.” He added that there have been reports of secondarydrone strikes on rescuers helping the injuredfrom the first drone strike, and if these reports are true,“those further attacks are a war crime.” Heyns has put the questions of accountability andtransparency to the Obama Administration’s representatives,but is not satisfied with the response. “I don’tthink we have a full answer to the legal framework andwe certainly don’t have the answer to the accountabilityissues,” he told reporters on June 20. “How are thesedecisions taken?” he asked. “Also the effect on citizens,civilians, how are these decisions taken in the first placeand the numbers that are involved and also the effect interms of accountability when civilians are also killed?The standards, also if one looks at the recent newspaperreports that came out, how are the direct participants inhostilities, how are they identified, the legitimate targetsas opposed to the civilians? Is it simply everybodywho’s around someone who’s considered to be a legitimatetarget—those things are very worrying and certainlythose are things that I will follow up on.” The U.S. response to Heyns’ report was to say thatmost of the issues of concern are outside the purview ofthe Human Rights Council, and besides, the rationaleand legal basis for the program has already been articulated,in public speeches by Deputy National SecurityAdvisor John O. Brennan at Harvard Law School onSept. 16, 2011, and at the Woodrow Wilson InternationalCenter for Scholars on April 30, 2012 (Brennan simply claimed

that the use of drones passed every legal and "ethical" hurdle

and called their use "wise" because no US lives are endangered);

by Attorney General Eric Holder at Northwestern University

School of Law on March 5, 2012 (Holder said that the "due

process" required by the US Constitution did not mean "judicial"

process - it is adequate that the President approves); and by

Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson at Yale LawSchool on February 22, 2012 (Johnson said that the entire world

is now our battlefield, and therefore any use of deadly force,

anywhere, is legal). Heyns ridiculed the U.S. argument that the drone killingsare a legitimate response to 9/11. “It’s difficult to seehow any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as inresponse to events in 2001,” he said. “Some states seemto want to invent new laws to justify new practices.”

Obama Sets Killer PrecedentThe Human Rights Council session opened on June19 with Heyns presenting his written report, which followedup from the report of his predecessor in 2008,which had taken notice of the lack of a legal frameworkfor drone killings and the lack of transparency into thepolicy behind them. “The Special Rapporteur reiterateshis predecessor’s recommendation that the [U.S.] Governmentspecify bases for decisions to kill rather thancapture ‘human targets’ and whether the State in whichthe killing takes place has given consent,” Heyns wrote(emphasis added). “It should also specify procedural safeguards inplace to ensure in advance that targeted killings complywith international law, as well as the measures takenafter such killing to ensure that its legal and factualanalysis is accurate.” Heyns concludes that he “is seriouslyconcerned that the practice of targeted killingcould set a dangerous precedent, in that any governmentcould, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives,decide to target and kill an individual on theterritory of any state if it considers that said individualconstitutes a threat.” The figures Heyns reported were astounding.Citing the Pakistan Human Rights Commission,Heyns said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 peoplein Pakistan in 2010 alone. Thousands have been killedin 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20% of whom arebelieved to be civilians. “Although figures vary widely with regard to droneattack estimates, all studies concur on one importantpoint: there has been a dramatic increase in their useover the past three years. While these attacks are directedat individuals believed to be leaders or activemembers of al Qaeda or the Taliban, in the context ofarmed conflict, in other instances, civilians have allegedlyalso perished in the attacks in regions where it isunclear whether there was an armed conflict or not,”Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effortbe made to arrest a suspect, in line with the “principles

of necessity and proportionality on the use of force.”There had been no official or satisfactory response todemands issued by Heyns’ predecessor, Heyns wrote. Heyns’ predecessor, New York University law professorPhilip Alston, was also sharply critical of theU.S. killer drone program. In a September 2011 reportafter he left the UN, Alston wrote that the use of targetedkillings by the Obama Administration “representsa fundamental regression in the evolution of both internationallaw and United States domestic law.” Until9/11, the trend on both international law and U.S. lawhad been away from targeted killings and assassinations,a trend reversed by the George W. Bush Administrationand, even more aggressively, by the Obama Administration.The complete lack of transparency andaccountability of the program, Alston concluded,“means that the United States cannot possibly satisfy itsobligations under international law for its use of lethalforce” thereby undermining international law and settingprecedents “which will inevitably come back tohaunt the United States before long, when invoked byother states with highly problematic agendas.

‘The Public Does Not Have a Right To Know’Not only did the Obama Administration representativesin Geneva refuse to provide satisfactory answersto Heyns’ questions, but back home, the Administrationmade clear that it has no intention of clarifying the legalbasis for the killer-drone program, nor releasing anyother pertinent information to the American public regardingthe program. In response to an ACLU/NewYork Times lawsuit, government lawyers told a Federaljudge in New York on June 21 that: “Whether or not theCIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involvedin targeted lethal operations remains classified.”Furthermore, “Even to describe the numbers and detailsof most of these documents [that the suit seeks] wouldreveal information that could damage the governmentscounter-terrorism efforts.” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer ridiculedthe government’s argument, noting that the drone programis an open secret and that the Administration hasboasted about it to reporters. “The public is entitled toknow more about the legal authority the administrationis claiming and the war the administration is using itfor,” Jaffer said in a statement. The ACLU is calling onObama to reveal more information “about the processby which individuals, including American citizens, areadded to government kill lists.”

Thursday, June 28, 2012

In recent weeks, insurgent forces in several countries have been forced to withdraw from territories they once held. Somalia's al Shabaab, which was pushed out of Mogadishu in October 2011, was ejected from Afmadow on May 30. The group now runs the risk of losing its hold once again on the port city of Kismayo, an important logistical and financial hub for al Shabaab.

In Syria, the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups were forced out of the city of Idlib and Homs' Baba Amr district in March. They also withdrew from Al-Haffah on June 13.

Meanwhile in Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been forced to retreat from towns it took control of last year in southern Abyan province, including Jaar, Shaqra and Zinjibar. The organization controlled the area it seized from the government through its Ansar al-Sharia front organization. AQAP was able to capitalize on the infighting that began in Yemen in 2011 and successfully diverted the government's focus away from AQAP and other militant groups. But in February, the election of new Yemeni President Abd Rabboh Mansour Hadi allowed the rift created by the infighting to be slowly healed. As a result, a combination of Yemeni soldiers and local tribesmen, backed by U.S. intelligence and fire support, have been able to push back AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia in recent weeks.

Losing these cities will immediately and significantly affect AQAP's ability to reach its goal of establishing an emirate based on Sharia law in southern Yemen. However, the loss of this territory will not mean an end to the group, just as losses of territory by militants in Somalia and Syria do not mean those insurgent groups have been defeated definitively. The reason for this rests in the very nature of insurgent warfare. To insurgent groups, the loss of territory is a setback, but is only one episode in what they intend to be a very long war.Ebbs and Flows

One of the basic tenets of modern Western warfare, as articulated by theorists such as Carl von Clausewitz, is the desire to destroy the enemy in quick, decisive battles that break the enemy's ability -- and will -- to fight. In contrast, one of the basic doctrines of insurgent warfare, as articulated by theorists such as Mao Zedong and Vo Nguyen Giap, is to decline decisive battle when the odds are not favorable and to live to fight another day. The insurgent wants to prolong the battle and create a drawn-out, grinding war that will gradually wear down the stronger enemy while insurgent forces build up enough strength to fight a conventional war and defeat their opponents. Western military leaders, then, seek to quickly resolve a war, while insurgents seek to prolong it by any means -- even if this means ceding control of territory until they can amass the strength to take it back.

In the modern jihadist context, this strategy was seen clearly in Afghanistan. The Taliban, when faced with overwhelming U.S. airpower in 2001, declined combat and permitted Northern Alliance ground forces to take control of Afghanistan's cities, rather than stand and fight until they were destroyed. The Taliban then launched a classic rural-based insurgency from the mountains using Pakistan as a haven for logistics and training. Iraqi government forces also took this approach when confronted by U.S. forces during the 2003 invasion.

Similarly, following the December 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, Islamist militants from the Supreme Islamic Courts Council -- many of whom would later go on to form al Shabaab -- declined to fight decisive battles and instead took to harassing the Ethiopian army's extended supply lines. This forced the Ethiopians to pull back from key cities they had captured, like Kismayo, and allowed the militants to regain control of large portions of southern Somalia. It is not unusual, then, for insurgent forces to take territory, only to surrender it and reclaim it again later.

For insurgents, the operational concept is that if the enemy attacks in force, they retreat; if the enemy stays in place, they conduct harassing attacks; if the enemy tires, the insurgents press the attack; and if the enemy retreats, the insurgents pursue. The idea is to apply prolonged pressure, both physical and psychological, and to create a mounting number of casualties over time. At the same time, the insurgent organization works to strengthen its own organizational support base and military capability. The basic doctrine of counterinsurgency is to deny insurgents the ability to establish and strengthen their support base and improve their capability.

The support base is a critical element for any insurgency. By gaining the sympathy of the population -- the human terrain -- the insurgents can rely on the population not only for material support, recruits and shelter, but also for intelligence. It blurs the human terrain, making it more difficult to distinguish insurgents from the population. This is why the political element of the insurgent effort was stressed so heavily in the theories of men like Mao and Giap, who viewed their actions in terms of the people's war. They also believed that a population's long-standing grievances give the people the ability to endure suffering and heavy losses. The people therefore have a stronger will to fight than the privileged government combatant or the foreign imperialist invader. Having favorable human terrain also permits insurgents to apply pressure to the enemy by using unconventional warfare in rear areas with operations like sniper attacks, improvised explosive device attacks, assassinations and kidnappings.Controlling Territory

It requires far more resources and effort to control and govern populated cities and towns than it does to conduct an insurgent campaign from the jungles or mountains. Maintaining control of a city requires many people to provide security while meeting the population's need for food, water, electricity and medical care. Such demands would use up many of the resources an insurgent organization would require to fight a protracted war of attrition, so it is not unusual for insurgents to abandon cities and foist the responsibility of caring for their populations upon the government. The goal in this approach is to force the government to expend its resources in order to meet the needs of the population, including security.

The insurgents can then come back to the cities with a small force to conduct harassing attacks on security forces or those cooperating with security forces, thus causing the government to invest even more resources in protecting the cities and reducing the number of forces available to pursue and fight insurgents in the countryside. Simply put, conducting insurgent attacks or terrorist attacks against the government's power center takes far less resources and manpower than it does to secure a town or city. Because of this, withdrawing from a city or town allows a militant group to actually increase the resources it has available to conduct attacks. But though there are benefits to harassing attacks, insurgents must be careful to avoid too many civilian casualties, because a high civilian death count can turn the population against the group, as happened with the umbrella militant organization Islamic State of Iraq in 2007.

Although there have been numerous urban guerilla movements -- and indeed, there is an entirely separate doctrine for urban guerilla organizations -- most insurgencies are based in rugged, ungoverned spaces. In such areas, fighters can seek refuge, build bases and train. Such ungoverned spaces have played an important role in the current insurgencies in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Mali. Another important consideration in many insurgent refuge spaces is the insurgents' ability to use an international border to keep the government from attacking them. This use of the borders was famously evidenced by the Viet Cong's use of Cambodia and Laos. More recently, this tactic has been utilized in the Taliban's use of Pakistan, the Iraqis' use of Syria and Iran, the Tuaregs' use of Libya and other Sahel countries, and the Syrian rebels' use of Turkey and Lebanon.

State sponsors can also provide significant help to insurgents. This was seen in the Soviet and Chinese help given to the Viet Cong and Viet Minh; and in more modern examples like the Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents, the Eritrean support for al Shabaab or the U.S., Turkish and Arab support for Syrian insurgents.

The real key in counterinsurgency is drying up the insurgents' base of support. Once that happens, the insurgents lose their ability to use the population as camouflage and as a source of recruits and material support, and the intelligence advantage is tipped toward the government. It is also helpful when the terrain available for insurgents to operate in is limited because it can allow counterinsurgents to systematically maneuver their armed forces in a way that forces the insurgents into open conflict. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for example, waged an insurgency against the Sri Lankan government from 1983 to 2009. The Sri Lankan government defeated the insurgents after India and then China provided material, money and advisers to government forces. That Sri Lanka is an island also served to constrict the Tigers' movements and forced them to try to hold territory, which ultimately led to their failure. Another successful suppression of insurgency occurred in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, when the British army used forced migration to separate the insurgents from their population and economic base. This eventually forced the Malayan Races Liberation Army to fight in order to attain necessary resources that are usually provided by the local population. This alienated the insurgents from the population and eventually led to British success.

Undercutting an insurgent group's support is normally quite difficult, especially when the group has access to large areas of rugged terrain. In Yemen, AQAP has been able to pull back from the towns it controlled to the harsh and desolate hinterlands where it was born. In the wild, tribally controlled areas of Yemen, the combination of hostile physical and human terrain will make it difficult to find and kill insurgents. There have been jihadists in Yemen since the late 1980s. They have long found shelter with the conservative tribes from which many of the jihadists originally hailed and to which they returned after fighting in places like Afghanistan. Many of the foreign jihadists in Yemen and Pakistan have married into influential tribes to increase their local support.

Syria's demographic situation and its long history as an Alawite-dominated police state have cultivated a great deal of hostility against the regime. It will be very difficult for the government to undercut foreign or domestic support for the insurgents. As with Syria's past insurgencies, Damascus will have to threaten and coerce the Sunni population into submission to maintain its grip on power.

Somalia is a confusing jumble of competing clans that have withstood attempts to govern them since the early 1990s. Even if al Shabaab becomes severely damaged as an organization, clan-based Islamist militancy of one form or another will persist in the region for the foreseeable future.

The insurgent strategy of fighting a long, protracted war means that insurgents' recent withdrawals from cities and towns in Yemen, Syria and Somalia do not necessarily mean that the wars in those regions will end anytime soon.

The East-West Wire is a news, commentary, and analysis service provided by the East-West Center in Honolulu. Any part or all of the Wire content may be used by media with attribution to the East-West Center or the person quoted. To receive Wire articles via email, subscribe here.

China's Support Enables North Korea's 'Bad Behavior,' Panelists Say

SEOUL (June 26, 2012) — North Korea’s attempted rocket launch in April was just the latest example of a country accustomed to reneging on international agreements, a panel of security experts told the East-West Center International Media conference in Seoul on Sunday.

The panel on Northeast Asian Security Issues touched on a wide range of topics, most of which related to North Korea, but it all boiled down to two words: distrust and misunderstanding.

“Since the first [North Korean] nuclear crisis broke out in the early 1990s, there have been repetitions of breakthroughs and breakdowns in the negotiation process,” said Ambassador Lim Sungnam, head of the South Korean delegation to the stalled Six Party Talks aimed at North Korean denuclearization.

China’s consistent support of North Korea enables the Pyonyang regime to flout international law, the panelists said, adding that Beijing views its support as a way to balance a region that Beijing sees as increasingly hostile.

South Korea’s efforts to increase coordination with the United States and Japan as a concerted effort to counter North Korea “has created a new regional order that China perceives that as a way of returning to the old Cold War structure,” said Moon Chung In, professor of political science at Yonsei University. “That’s bad news.”

“Beijing has shown a pattern of rewarding [North Korea’s] bad behavior,” said Peter Beck, South Korea country representative for the Asia Foundation. “China has shown – year in, year out – that it will steadfastly stand by North Korea, no matter what North Korea does, short of starting a war. If North Korea starts a war, I think China will watch.”

Although the North Korean leadership may often seem irrational to Western eyes, Beck said, self-preservation will always be a guiding force.

“It just makes no sense sometimes, but … the North Korean regime wants to survive, and, in that sense, will behave in a rational manner,” he said. “But if the regime has a death wish, if they think they’re going down, all bets are off.”

However, he said he doesn’t see that as a likely scenario in the immediate future. “What I worry about is not that North Korea has a death wish, but that they could miscalculate,” he said. “Koreans of all stripes are masters of brinksmanship, but the problem with brinksmanship is sometimes you go off the edge.”

Beck appealed to the journalists in attendance not to “get North Korea wrong.”

“Notice I did not say ‘get North Korea right,’ he added. “I don’t know how to get North Korea right.”

“There are many in the media who say North Korea is unstable,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the correct word. I think what we face with North Korea is a lot of uncertainty right now, particularly regarding Kim Jung Un – who he is, what he really thinks, who he listens to and, most importantly, what path he will be choosing in the months and years to come.”

Geithner and Bernanke Demand New Mega-Bailout of Europe

-Capitol Hill sources have confirmed that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are demanding that Congress prepare emergency legislation for yet another hyperinflationary bailout of the hopelessly bankrupt trans-Atlantic financial system. For the past week, the two men have been meeting secretly with leading Congressional Democrats and Republicans, demanding that they draft new legislation to bailout the banks on an even larger scale than after the 2008 collapse.

According to several congressional sources, Geithner and Bernanke have pledged that they will do everything in their power to flood European banks with bailout funds through the Federal Reserve, but they candidly admit that it may be impossible, and that congressional action may be required. If the crisis hits, they warn, there must be legislation already prepared, because the speed and magnitude of the crisis may require extraordinary intervention to "save the system."

Lyndon LaRouche today denounced the Bernanke-Geithner efforts as "tantamount to treason." "The current Trans-Atlantic system cannot be saved" LaRouche warned. "The only option is the immediate reinstatement of the original Franklin Roosevelt Glass-Steagall Act. It must happen now!" LaRouche warned that, as of Thursday or Friday of this week, the entire European financial system will explode. "Either Germany will hold firm and refuse to surrender the last vestiges of national sovereignty, or Europe will go into a hyperinflationary breakdown. It all hangs on Germany." German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from a swarm of British and Wall Street agents - from Geithner and Bernanke to George Soros - to agree to a German bailout of the entire euro system. "The reality is that the gambling debts of the European and Wall Street banks can never be paid. The only option is an orderly cancellation of all those trillions of dollars of gambling debts by reinstating Glass-Steagall."

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) has introduced H.R. 1489 to reinstate Glass-Steagall and the bill now has 69 co-sponsors from both parties. Last week, LaRouchePAC exposed the fact that former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has been mobilized, on behalf of Geithner and Bernanke, to sabotage the passage of Glass-Steagall. Now, Geithner and Bernanke are pushing for another even bigger taxpayers bailout of Wall Street and London's gambling debts. According to Capitol Hill sources, even Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) rejected the Bernanke and Geithner demands!

Lyndon LaRouche reiterated that the only option is Glass-Steagall. "Anyone who is not fighting for Glass-Steagall now is going to be judged a traitor to humanity. The only way to save the viable commercial banks is to end the bailouts and go back to Glass-Steagall. If Glass-Steagall is not passed into law now, we face the danger of total chaos, when the system comes crashing down. It could happen as early as the end of this week, as the European crisis reaches a break point."

WTC Destruction & High Temperature Aftermath: ONLY Nuclear Bombs and the China Syndrome Fit All the Evidence

Editors Note: It is important to point that micro nukes were most likely used at the base core of the WTC buildings in conjunction with nano-thermite and C-4.

In attempting to ascertain what caused the destruction of the WTC on 9/11/01, and the great heat and molten metal observed for up to six months afterward, one must account for ALL the phenomena involved in WTC destruction, and the aftermath– and not just one or two factors.

Only nuclear bombs and the resulting China Syndrome can account for ALL phenomena observed. The overview and numerous supporting articles on the nuclear destruction of the WTC are here: wtcdemolition.blogspot.com.

But, at the outset, we should realize that there is an abundance of evidence that the O.C.T. (Official Conspiracy Theory) is quite bogus.

1. First, low yield nukes (mini-nukes or micro-nukes) are a proven fact that the U.S Govt has admitted to since the 1950’s with their Davey Crocket rifle, and more recently with a physicist’s testimony to Congress. It is also documented fact that since the 1960’s, and Project Plowshare, low radiation nukes– and later neutron bombs– have been available, and were planned for excavation projects and such. My “many small nukes” WTC hypothesis indicates that numerous low yield nukes went off INSIDE (near the center of) the towers. They vaporized anything near them (via million degree temperatures and/or high neutron flux), but the yield of these micro-nukes was deliberately small enough not to vaporize the outer structure. This also ensured that any radiation was contained during detonation. And Plowshare, and neutron bombs, prove low radiation nukes have been available for decades.

2. MASSIVE EVIDENCE of ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSES (EMP) FROM NUKES. This includes the eyewitness, sworn testimony of EMT responder, Patricia Ondrovic (and others). She reported that as WTC1 was beginning to be destroyed, she saw flickering lights in WTC6 lobby where she tried to enter, but was stopped. And just outside at that time, cars caught fire without any visible reason, and one then had its car door explode off of it; and the door hit and injured her as she began to flee the area. Exactly how EMP from nukes did all this is explained here, along with other evidence of EMP during tower destruction from nuclear bombs.

3. DUST PARTICLE SIZE WAS LESS THAN 2.5 MICRONS– & LIED ABOUT by the Gov’t’s main OCT (Official “Collapse” Theory) engineer/author. You can think of a mortar and pestle, and grinding something large into smaller and smaller pieces. It takes more and more energy input to yield smaller and smaller pieces. A nuclear bomb is known to yield particle sizes down to 10 nanometers. (1 nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter). And Govt scientists had equipment to analyze the WTC dust down to 10-nanometer size, if they wanted to, and should have. Unless they did, and have refused to release this. What they (the U.S. Geological Survey scientists) did was lump together all dust sizes less than 2.5 microns and released this data. (A micron is 1 millionth of a meter, and a thousand times larger than 1 nanometer). Nonetheless, the Govt’s main engineer/author, Z.P. Bazant, numerous times wrote papers that claimed that 10 microns was the smallest sized particles created during WTC destruction, and later collected by USGS scientists. For years he did not cite the work that showed, this. Last year he did cite a reference, and it led back to the 2.5 micron study, NOT to the 10 microns he claimed as the smallest dust particle size! So he flat out committed fraud here. He had to do this as his bogus papers claim that the gravitational potential energy (height times weight) of the towers accounted for the energy needed to create the smallest dust particle size. And there isn’t enough energy from his theory to account for 2.5 micron size dust, let alone the much smaller dust sizes that the USGS did not ascertain or release! The bogus physics and math from Bazant and others is here.

4. MELTED, HANGING SKIN WITHOUT FIRE was reported by at least 4 known WTC survivors. This includes WTC worker Felipe David, whose own words state this occurred without fire, but his story when told by another, has “fire” added. There are also two women who reported (on the “Larry King Show”) that a similar thing happened to them, and they don’t know why, because they too were not in any fire. And there is also a security guard with a similar report. The security guard and Felipe David had this happen to them in the lobby and the sub-basement area of WTC1 respectively. Outside the towers, firemen/responders also felt great heat on their skin without being near any fire DURING TOWER DESTRUCTION. Only the thermal rays of a nuclear bomb can account for this. They go out the farthest when a nuke goes off. And hanging skin was a common occurrence in Hiroshima survivors. Note that the outside firemen feeling heat on their skin (without fire near them) also disproves “DEW”, as they are NOT in the towers nor right under them either, and thus if “directed energy beams did it”, and these must be coherent, they would not diverge and cause heat far from their target! So no “DEW” was involved.

5. SUB-BASEMENT LEVEL, 50-TON STEEL PRESS & HEAVY DOOR VAPORIZED. At the same time as Felipe David’s nightmare was unfolding, and also in the sub-basement, WTC engineer Mike Pecoraro reports going up a level and seeing that a sub-basement level was in shambles and was “just gone.” Also he states a 50-ton press has also been apparently vaporized, and a 300 pound steel/concrete door has just been left shriveled up like foil. The only things that could do this are the multi-million degree temperatures, and neutron bombardment, from a nuclear bomb. Coupling this with the four survivors who had melted, hanging skin at this same time, we have evidence of blast, high temperatures, neutron bombardment and thermal rays– all virtual proof of nuclear bomb use.

6. HEAT GENERATION AT THE WTC FOR UP TO 6 MONTHS AFTER 9/11- -THE CHINA SYNDROME AFTERMATH (CSA) (see http://wtc-chinasyndrome.blogspot.com) No heat “lingers” for weeks and months, not alleged jet fuel, not alleged thermite (which would have been used up either in minutes or hours–or during its use as an explosive). We have the documented, witnessed, and well photographed and videotaped great heat and molten metal for weeks, and indeed for up to six months underground at the WTC– until all radioactive fission fragments were carted away. No heat lingers for that long; this could only have been heat GENERATION. The evidence of great heat throughout much of the rubble pile and even higher temperatures underneath the two towers and WTC7 is massive. It included melted firemen’s boots, even dogs had to wear special boots, a mass of congealed bullets in WTC6 going off weeks later from heat, and many photos of steam emanation from the continual water hosing of the “hotspots” all around the WTC. The China Syndrome HAD TO ARISE because each of the numerous small nukes used up only 1-6% of its fissile material– which is standard for nukes. The remainder was then available as radioactive fragments, releasing great heat for a long time (until removed), as the half-life of Uranium 235 is 700 million years. And it is likely that there were numerous, redundant nukes employed, and the phenomena of “fratricided” and fizzled nukes may also have occurred as these are common with nuclear detonations. These effects likely further exacerbated the China Syndrome. The radioactive fragments were somewhat dispersed throughout the rubble pile, and in greatest concentration underneath the towers and WTC7– where water and sand treatments could not readily be employed. Note that the alleged Tritium finding that the Govt released, may be a red herring to fool people to look for top-secret unknown types of nukes, which couldn’t have led to the CSA, which is what clearly occurred. The ludicrous lying (“there never was any heat during or after WTC destruction”) or the poor attempts to create new laws of chemistry and physics by alleged 9/11truthers (“super nanocomposite thermite burns forever”) only shows how desperate the Govt is to hide the China Syndrome Aftermath.

7. THE MISSING PEOPLE, FURNITURE, steel & other contents of the towers. Destruction of the towers vaporized many of the nearly 3,000 people who died, as well as much furniture, steel and other building contents. The medical examiner was unable to find or utilize any strands of DNA for over 1100 people. The rubble pile from the two towers was only a couple of stories high when it should have been several times higher from a “collapse,” or even a conventional demolition. There is much missing mass from the “extraordinarily high temperatures” as fire engineering Professor Barnett declared after examining vaporized steel, that occurred during tower/WTC7 destruction. Nukes vaporize matter near their hypocenter. Thermite, thermobarics, etc. DO NOT. Contrary to what some claim, neither thermite nor thermobarics could vaporize the missing people, furniture, steel and other contents, as detailed here.

8. CLASSICAL GOV’T DISINFO METHODS ENSUED whereby their agents put out supposedly “alternative theories” involving alleged “secret, new technologies” that are either evidence-free and/or impossible. Space Beams/DEW (Directed Energy Weapons), or ludicrous “super nanocomposite thermite burns forever” theories were created by the intel agencies to cover up the nuking of the WTC, and the China Syndrome Aftermath. (Thermite cools off in minutes or hours.) These “theories” desperately try to claim new phenomena or new laws of physics and chemistry–as does the 9/11 Commission’s ludicrous “findings.”

There is some general information on radiation sources that needs elucidation. Due to absorption and other factors, radiation levels can go down quickly– unless radioactive fragments (radionuclides) are released to the environment.

Unless one is close (like Felipe David, who appears to have received thermal radiation, and not ionizing radiation)– or the radiation is very intense– enough distance/air or most materials, will stop most forms of radiation.

This assumes one does not inhale or ingest radioactive particles or radionuclides. The underground WTC areas– which likely had the highest radiation yields (and also heat)– were off limits to all but a few responders.

Honest people, not in DENIAL, must see the analogy to the Reichstag fire set by the German Nazis, in 1933, in Berlin. This was their seat of almost their entire federal gov’t. And this fire/destruction was used as an excuse to destroy their Constitution, and as an excuse for War on “terrorists,” and then all of Europe.

There was one difference with the Nazis, however. They waited till the middle of the night, when there were no inhabitants in the Reichstag building! Of course, that German Gov’t did not admit they did it themselves, but that came out after they lost WWII.

If U.S. Govt agencies have certain types of proof that they nuked the WTC, and thus its largest city; does any honest person think these Govt agencies would ever release this data–unless a new Gov’t came about?

There is reason to believe that other crucial data such as WTC rubble pile temperature (AVIRIS, 2nd set), and WTC destruction seismic recordings were altered.

This physicist hypothesizes that WTC responders AND nearby Metro New York residents and workers, that were exposed either the longest or to certain areas with the “hottest”spots face the risk of getting cancer and other immune disorders from radiation exposure in the years and decades to come.

Sadly this will prove the China Syndrome Aftermath in the worst possible way. Private persons and institutions are urged to get and keep statistics on this, as the Gov’t will likely cover this up.

This private communication is from one of the beneficiaries of the instruments known as the "Declaration of Independence", and his standing as one of The People, is pursuant to Common Law, the law of the land, of the Republics known as the united States of America, and his law is declared as being the Common Law, and his status that of being one of The People, with supreme authority over himself not others. I am a servant of the One Creator God and His Son Jesus Christ.I send out e-mail to many different people. I do not necessarily agree with all content. It is up to the individual to discern what is important and to react however you are led...my intent is to give everyone a view that you don't see on the controlled media...Dennis

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

RSIS presents the following commentary Myanmar: Learning from the Philippines’ democratic transition by Julius Cesar I. Trajano. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward anycomments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, atRSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg

No. 111/2012 dated 27 June 2012

Myanmar:Learning from the Philippines’ democratic transition

By Julius Cesar I. Trajano

Synopsis

In pursuing democratic reforms, Myanmar may take a leaf from the experience of the Philippines’ difficult transition from authoritarianism to democracy. But as demonstrated by the Philippine case, democracy alone cannot address all the challenges besetting Myanmar.

Commentary

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III offered his government’s assistance in Myanmar’s democratisation during the visit of Myanmar’s Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin on 14-15 June 2012. Aquino related to him the Philippines’ democratic transition and pledged Filipinos’ readiness to share their experience.

The Philippines was once one of the harshest critics of Myanmar's human rights record. Filipino human rights officials plan to visit Napyidaw to train their counterparts in the recently-established Myanmar human rights commission. Indeed, Myanmar can draw some valuable lessons from the strengths and shortcomings of the Philippines’ democratisation.

Military’s involvement in politics

During the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos (1972-86), military officers were deeply embedded in politics; they were appointed to many civilian posts in government agencies; and were involved in rigged elections and suppressing anti-dictatorship movements.

The restoration of democracy after the 1986 People Power Revolution did not stop some factions in the military from conspiring to seize political power and/or influence political decisions from outside the democratic institutions. Rebel soldiers launched seven coup attempts during the term of President Corazon Aquino (1986-92). During the presidency of Gloria Arroyo (2001-10), two instances of military mutiny were staged against her by a faction of junior officers denouncing corruption in the military and demanding reforms.

The Philippines’ democratisation process had a hard task putting the military under effective civilian control. Moreover, many self-serving politicians used some factions in the military to cause political destabilisation in democratically-elected presidencies, highlighting the failure to bring political nonpartisanship to the military.

In Myanmar President Thein Sein’s political reforms could still be undermined given the wide political power that the military still has. Immediately before Aung San Suu Kyi and her partymates took their parliamentary oath in May, the military filled its 25% membership quota in the parliament with high-ranking officers in order to bolster its influence in legislation. In order to prevent any military coup like what happened in post-1986 Philippines, Myanmar needs to steadily establish civilian control over the military, take over its businesses and begin professionalising its ranks.

Despite pronouncements about political and economic reforms, President Thein Sein has never talked about military self-financing. Aside from its bloated budget, the military also sources its funds from the revenues of its conglomerates: the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings and the Myanmar Economic Corp. Myanmar’s oil export revenues reached US$2.9 billion last year which were deposited to off-shore bank accounts owned by the military. It will be hard for the civilian government to control the military if the latter has its own sources of funds.

Upholding human rights

Upholding the rights of all ethnic groups is crucial for national reconciliation and political stability. However, there is no guarantee that human rights are protected until an independent and effective judiciary is in place in the country. Myanmar needs to look at the not-so-good human rights record of the Philippines in order to realise the importance of strengthening an impartial judiciary and prosecuting violators.

Despite the introduction of democratic reforms human rights violations continue to be reported in Myanmar. In the first 14 months of the Thein Sein presidency NGOs recorded 85 cases of torture, 59 cases of forced labour and 114 cases of confiscation or destruction of property. Most of the abuses are related to the continuing armed conflicts in some parts of the country, the most recent ones in Kachin and Rakhine states.

In the Philippines, despite President Aquino’s promise of reforms, extrajudicial killings of journalists and political activists, allegedly committed by state security forces, continue to threaten human rights. Upon his assumption of office in 2010, he inherited 150 unresolved cases of politically-motivated killings, while more than 10 cases occurred under his watch. Among the challenges in the prosecution of human rights cases are the reluctance of the Philippine military to cooperate in investigations and weak judiciary and law enforcement agencies.

Expanding the role of civil society

While the Philippines’ democratisation suffered shortcomings in important reform areas, a thriving civil society has been regarded as the country’s biggest democratic achievement which can be emulated by Myanmar. NGOs have been deeply involved in providing public goods such as housing, education, health care, environment protection, and combating corruption, among others. In developing countries like the Philippines, civil society assumes the role of helping the state in providing basic and social services. This can be adopted in Myanmar, given the bureaucratic and financial limitations faced by its government in improving the country’s economic and human development.

Under the Thein Sein administration, Myanmar’s civil society remains vulnerable to government control. Bound by the Law of Founding an Organisation, NGOs face restrictions in the registration process such as the prohibition on them to be involved in politics and advocate for good governance; the steep registration fee of US$600, and regular submissions to the government on their activities and finances. Hence, many local NGOs are not registered with the government. By the end of 2011, around 280 NGOs had registered, out of the estimated total of 20,000 NGOs in the country. The challenge now for the Thein Sein administration is to allow local NGOs to operate independently from the government and constructively participate in political affairs by easing the stringent requirements for NGO registration.

While Myanmar may take a completely different path in pursuing democratisation, there are still ample opportunities for the Burmese people to learn from the shortcomings and potentials of Philippine democracy. As seen in the case of the Philippines, democracy alone is not a silver bullet that will solve all political, economic and social ills. Democratic reforms must be complemented with transparency, accountability and good governance.

Julius Cesar I. Trajano is a Senior Analyst at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Israel on June 25 for his first state visit since retaking the presidency. The visit was arranged in mid-May, and so at least part of the agenda was set, given events in Syria and Egypt. The interesting thing about Israel and Russia is that while they seem to be operating in the same areas of interest and their agendas seem disconnected, their interests are not always opposed. It is easy to identify places they both care about but more difficult to identify ways in which they connect. It is therefore difficult to identify the significance of the visit beyond that it happened.

An example is Azerbaijan. Russia is still a major weapons provider for Azerbaijan, but the Israelis are now selling it large amounts of weapons and appear to be using it as a base from which to observe and, according to rumors, possibly attack Iran. Russia, which supports Armenia, a country Azerbaijan fought a war with in the late 1980s and early 1990s and technically still is at war with, ought to oppose Israel's action, particularly since it threatens Iran, which Russia does not want attacked. At the same time, Russia doesn't feel threatened by Israeli involvement in Azerbaijan, and Israel doesn't really care about Armenia. Both are there, both are involved and both think Azerbaijan is important, yet each operates in ways that ought to conflict but don't.

The same is true in the more immediate case of Syria, where its downing of a Turkish plane has created an unexpected dynamic for this visit. To think about this we need to consider Russian and Israeli strategy and its odd lack of intersection in Syria.Russia's Need for a U.S. Distraction

Russia has complex relationships in the region, particularly focused on Syria and Iran. Russia's interest in both countries is understandable. Putin, who has said he regarded the breakup of the Soviet Union as a geopolitical catastrophe, views the United States as Russia's prime adversary. His view is that the United States not only used the breakup to extend NATO into the former Soviet Union in the Baltics but also has tried to surround and contain Russia by supporting pro-democracy movements in the region and by using these movements to create pro-American governments. Putin sees himself as being in a duel with the United States throughout the former Soviet Union.

The Russians believe they are winning this struggle. Putin is not so much interested in dominating these countries as he is in being certain that the United States doesn't dominate them. That gives Russia room to maneuver and allows it to establish economic and political relations that secure Russian interests. In addition, Russia has tremendously benefited from the U.S. wars in the Islamic world. It is not so much that these wars alienated Muslims, although that was beneficial. Rather, what helped the Russians most was that these wars absorbed American strategic bandwidth.

Obviously, U.S. military and intelligence capabilities that might have been tasked to support movements and regimes in Russia's "near abroad" were absorbed by conflict in the Islamic world. But perhaps even more important, the strategic and intellectual bandwidth of U.S. policymakers was diverted. Russia became a secondary strategic interest after 9/11. While some movements already in place were supported by the United States, this was mostly inertia, and as the Russians parried and movements in various countries splintered, the United States did not have resources to respond.

The Russians also helped keep the United States tied up in Afghanistan by facilitating bases in Central Asia and providing a corridor for resupply. Russia was able to create a new reality in the region in which it was the dominant power, without challenge.

The Russians therefore valued the conflict in the Middle East because it allowed Russia to be a secondary issue for the only global power. With the war in Iraq over and the war in Afghanistan ending, the possibility is growing that the United States would have the resources and bandwidth to resume the duel on the Russian periphery. This is not in the Russian interest. Therefore, the Russians have an interest in encouraging any process that continues to draw the United States into the Islamic world. Chief among these is supporting Iran and Syria. To be more precise, Russia does not so much support these countries as it opposes measures that might either weaken Iran or undermine the Syrian government. From the Russian point of view, the simple existence of these regimes provides a magnet that diverts U.S. power.Israel's Position on Syria

This brings us back to Putin's visit to Israel. From the Russian point of view, Syria is not a side issue but a significant part of its strategy. Israel has more complex feelings. The regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, while the Soviets were allied with it, represented a significant danger to Israel. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Syria lost its patron and diminished as a threat. Since then, the Syrians under al Assad had two virtues from the Israeli point of view. The first was that they were predictable. Their interests in Lebanon were built around financial and political goals that could be accommodated by the Israelis in exchange for limitations on the sorts of military activity that Israel could not tolerate. Furthermore, Syria's interests did not include conflict with Israel, and therefore Syria held Hezbollah in check until it was forced out of Lebanon by the United States in 2005.

The second advantage of the al Assad regime in relation to Israel was that it was not Sunni but Alawite, a Shiite sect. During the 2000s, Israel and the West believed the main threat emanated from the Sunni world. Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas were all Sunni. Over the past decade, a corrupt minority Alawite regime has appeared preferable to Israel than a coherent majority radical Islamist regime in the north. It wasn't certain how radical it would be, but at the same time there appeared to be more risk on the Sunni side than on the Shiite side.

Israel's position on the al Assad regime has shifted in the past year from hoping it would survive to accepting that it couldn't and preparing for the next regime. Underlying this calculus was a reconsideration of which regime would be more dangerous. With the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq and with Iran filling the vacuum that was left, Iran became a greater threat to Israel than Hamas and the Sunnis. Therefore, Israel now desires a Sunni regime in Syria that would block Iranian ambitions.

In this sense, Israeli and Russian interests continue to diverge. At the same time, the Israelis are aware that they have very little influence over what happens in Syria. They are bystanders hoping that things work out for them. Whether they favor this or that faction in Syria matters little. Indeed, open Israeli support for any faction can hurt that side. Therefore, Syria is a demonstration of the limits of Israeli power. What happens in Syria matters a great deal, but Israel lacks the power and influence to have an impact.Coinciding Interests

The Russians do have some power and influence. The weapons they supply to the Syrian government can help the regime survive. Their ability to block or circumvent sanctions helps both Iran and Syria. Russia cannot impose a solution, but it may be able to create the circumstances under which the United States is drawn in and diverted. At the same time, it must be remembered that Russia has its own problem with Islamic in the northern Caucasus. These groups are mostly Sunni, but there are a wide variety of Sunnis. While the Russians want to prevent a radical Sunni group in Syria, they could on this level live with a more moderate Sunni group if they cannot keep al Assad or his regime in power.

Putin's visit is intended to make the United States nervous and to try to lay the groundwork for shifts in Israel's relation to Russia that could pay off in the long run. The Israelis, however, do have things they need from Putin. They cannot control regime change in Syria, but to some extent Russia can. And here Israeli and Russian interests coincide. Israel would tolerate the survival of the al Assad regime as long as Syria does not become an Iranian satellite.

Russia could counterbalance Iran if al Assad's regime survived. If, on the other hand, his regime fell, Israel and Russia both have an interest in a moderate Sunni regime. This is where Russia must make a decision -- assuming it has the power to affect the outcome. In the long run, a moderate Sunni regime is in its interest. In the short run, it wants a regime that creates the greatest unease for the United States -- that is, either the al Assad regime as an Iranian asset or a radical Islamist regime.

There is a point where all this comes together. Turkey has decided, in response to the downing of its aircraft, to call a meeting of NATO. Turkey is not prepared to unilaterally intervene in Syria, but having lost an aircraft it could ask for a NATO intervention of some sort. Turkey has been hostile to al Assad from early on, and this gives it the opportunity to invoke the alliance under its common defense policy.

How NATO will respond is unknown, save that the rhetoric will be intense and the desire for combat restrained. Neither Russia nor Israel would be upset by a NATO intervention. From the Russian point of view, a NATO intervention involving large amounts of U.S. forces would be the best it could hope for, especially if NATO gets bogged down, as tends to happen in such interventions. From the Israeli point of view, having NATO take responsibility for Syria would be the best possible outcome by far.

Of course, this was not on the table when the Israeli-Russian meeting was set up. At that time, the meeting was meant to explore the differences on subjects such as Syria. But with recent events, the benefits of possible NATO involvement, however unlikely, are something that Russia and Israel agree on. Of course, neither is a member of NATO, and getting any NATO country to commit troops to Syria is unlikely. But what was likely to be a pointless discussion now has some point.

Israel would like Russia as a mild counterweight to the United States but without disrupting relations with the United States. Russia would like to have additional options in the Middle East beyond Iran and Syria but without alienating those states. Neither is likely. When we dig into the strange relationship between two countries deeply involved in each other's areas of interest yet never quite intersecting, an answer begins to emerge.

There is little conflict between Russia's and Israel's interests because neither country is nearly as powerful as it would like to be in the region. Russia has some options but nothing like it had during the Cold War. Israel has little influence in the outcome in Syria or in Egypt.

Still, it is in the interest of both countries to make themselves appear to be weightier than they are. A state visit should help serve that purpose.

RSIS presents the following commentary After Rio+20: What is ‘The Future We Want’? by Ong Suan Ee. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward anycomments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, atRSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg

No. 110/2012 dated 26 June 2012

After Rio+20:What is ‘The Future We Want’?

By Ong Suan Ee

Synopsis

The world’s biggest summit on environment and development in 20 years wrapped up last Friday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Has the outcome of Rio+20 managed to meet its promise?

Commentary

The Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in Rio de Janeiro on 19-24 June 2012 brought together world leaders, government officials, and civil society and private sector representatives who sought the best ways to work towards achieving a global ‘green economy’, poverty eradication and sustainable development.

Long before the conference even began, however, there was considerable pessimism that Rio+20 would amount to anything more than another elite talk-shop. The outcome of this massive multilateral effort appears to vindicate this gloomy forecast. What did Rio+20 achieve?

One Step Forward

There were several positive outcomes, the most high-profile of which is the decision to set up Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) next year. Unlike the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDG topics are broader and will include all three aspects of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental. The SDGs also seek to perpetuate momentum in international development work beyond the poverty-eradicating mission of the MDGs, which will lapse in 2015.

Eight international development banks, including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank (WB) and Intra-American Development Bank (IADB) agreed to invest US$175 billion to sustainable public transport systems over the next decade. Private sector companies pledged to contribute US$50 billion to a UN-backed plan to provide energy to the entire global population by 2030.

While these promises should not be taken lightly, it remains to be seen to what degree these pledges will be fulfilled, particularly in a time of persistent global economic uncertainty.

And Two Steps Back?

To its credit, the 238-paragraph ‘The Future We Want’ outcome document attempts to call attention to a cornucopia of the most pressing development issues, ranging from food security and poverty eradication to small island developing states and mining. However, its hope to address all these challenges while upholding states’ ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ and being ‘people-centred and inclusive, providing opportunities and benefits for all citizens and all countries’ seems to err on the side of breadth, while lacking necessary depth and conviction.

The language of the document is also weak and evasive. It repeatedly “reaffirms”, “recognises”, “emphasises”, and “strongly urges”, but “commits” to little. The document is further debilitated by the deletion of several major commitments, including specific targets for cutting carbon emissions and the proposed establishment of a US$30 billion fund for sustainable environmental activities in developing countries. Instead, there was a promise to enhance funding for this cause, but the specifics were left to future discussions.

The notable non-attendance of US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel despite their having gone to Mexico for the G20 summit the previous week, reflects that some of the world’s most advanced countries remain preoccupied with other more immediate priorities such as the Eurozone crisis rather than environmental and developmental concerns.

The conference has also come under fire for its underpinning ‘green economy’ concept. Much of Rio+20 was focused on making the Third World a part of the ‘green economy’, an effort led by developed Western nations. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) defines a green economy as one that ‘results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities’ – that is to say, a low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive economy.

A green economy aims to create jobs and profits through low-carbon, resource-saving businesses. Part of this involves potentially placing economic value on environmental services provided by nature and to incorporate environmental factors alongside GDP as a measure of national well-being. This approach has drawn significant flak for attempting to ‘commodify and financialise nature’. Critics have also argued that today’s green economy policies only make minor carbon reductions at a very high cost and promise millions of jobs with large subsidies. This in turn raises costs for the rest of the economy and causes an equal or greater number of job losses elsewhere.

Also, the green economy framework has been criticised for not considering the most immediate concerns of the developing world, including malnourishment; the burden of tropical, communicable, and neglected diseases; and access to clean drinking water, sanitation, and electricity. According to Dr Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, 13% of all deaths in the developing world are still attributable to air and water pollution.

How to Achieve ‘The Future We Want?’

Several experts including Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute have argued that the most important outcome of Rio+20 is not a document or treaty, but that it catalyses a global call to action, spearheaded by public awareness of sustainable development and climate change issues and a desire to make these priorities central to global thinking and action.

This is already taking place as a ‘patchwork’ climate change and sustainable development architecture emerges. Green initiatives in individual countries, communities and corporations are prospering. Solar and wind capacity is increasing across Europe. The US is increasingly using natural gas in place of gasoline and coal, and the energy potential of shale gas is being tapped with growing zeal. China is replanting trees in deforested areas and supporting local emissions-trading initiatives. Most importantly, this groundswell of bottom-up effort will continue to mature – with or without the support of international accord.

For Rio+20’s top-down approach to stay relevant within this matrix of disparate yet connected developments, it is imperative that international governing bodies determine precisely what they want the future to look like.

As the global sustainable development landscape changes, the UN needs to definitively decide whether or not it wants to be a key actor and driver of the change that is already taking place on the ground. Should the UN’s vision of the future it wants remain ambiguous and therefore directionless, it stands to lose not just credibility, but also valuable opportunities for collaboration with dynamic and forward-looking interest groups who seek the very same thing - a sustainable future for all.

Ong Suan Ee is Senior Research Analyst at the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

About Me

ROLAND SAN JUAN was a researcher, management consultant, inventor, a part time radio broadcaster and a publishing director. He died last November 25, 2008 after suffering a stroke. His staff will continue his unfinished work to inform the world of the untold truths. Please read Erick San Juan's articles at: ericksanjuan.blogspot.com This blog is dedicated to the late Max Soliven, a FILIPINO PATRIOT.
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